There have some very specific times in my life that a mentor, teacher or spiritual guide has profoundly shaped and formed me.
David Gladden was a real live cowboy. He made his living farming and raising cattle on the desert. Gathering 350 momma cows and their calves over 90 sections of desert takes a lot of skill and some good horses. I learned everything I know about horses from David. He taught me that a snug cinch would keep my legs on the side and my head in the middle. That meant I had to get off the horse regularly to loosen the cinch and let the horse breath for a few minutes and then tighten the cinch again. When you first put the on the saddle the horse will puff up their lungs, in objection to being saddled. Of course, as soon as you start to ride off they focus on where they are going and relax, thus loosening the cinch and the saddle. So, after riding for about 30 minutes, get off and reset the cinch.
The only time I got seriously hurt with my horses was the one time I didn’t get off my horse after about 30 minutes to re-tighten the cinch. As I was coming up out of a ravine I realized my legs were not on the side and my head was not in the middle. The cinch slipped, the saddle went to the side and off I went. That cost me a broken arm.
In the last ten or so years I have been especially blessed to have encountered some deeply spiritual people who have opened their souls to nurture my spiritual journey.
Sat Kartar Kalsa Reimy was one of those people. She was the Director of my Clinical Pastoral Education experience when I did my hospital chaplaincy work. Sat Kartar is a Puerto Rican Catholic who converted to become a leader in her Sikh community.
Sat Kartar wore a traditional turban and flowing silk garments. She was gentle, yet direct. She knew her craft as a hospital chaplain and was nationally recognized as a CPE director. Her spirituality was grounded in hours of daily meditation. Her presence was always felt in the room long before she arrived.
After our first class she asked to visit with me for a few minutes. I sat down beside her expecting an explanation about my responsibilities at the hospital. Instead, she looked past my eyes into my soul and said to me, “You are not the Lone Ranger.”
I had two choices at that moment. I could have added another layer to the wall of my psyche or I could open my soul and be vulnerable. My life’s journey had brought me to the point where choosing to be vulnerable was the better option. And for that choice my life continues to be molded.
Psalm 25 is a psalm of self-reflection. There are those times in our lives that call for taking stock of where the journey has taken us and what the road ahead might look like. Walter Bruggemann writes that self-reflection is a time of disorientation that then makes way for re-orientation.
Psalm 25 is also about the journey of life and who will be our guide and teacher. Four times in the 25th Psalm we hear the word path, “derek,” the Hebrew word for journey. We are on a spiritual journey. But who will be our spiritual directors for the journey?
The choice is mine. Will I be the Lone Ranger, or will I seek spiritual direction? Will I listen to my guide or will I risk getting seriously hurt?
Direction can only come if I am humble. In other words, I am humble when, as the Psalmist says, I lift my soul to the Lord. The opening line of Psalm 25 is the basis for the second line of the sursum corda. “Lift up your hearts, we lift them to the Lord.” When we lift our soul to God we are being vulnerable and humble, then we able to hear God.
We lift our souls to God, God is faithful to provide us with spiritual directors who will, the psalmist writes, teach us God’s paths and lead us in the way of truth.
And what does God’s path look like? The psalmist tells us God’s way is the way of steadfast love, mercy and goodness.
About fifteen years ago I felt like I was at a crossroads in life, a time for some serious self-reflection. After a lot of soul-searching conversation with some trusted friends, one suggested I need a spiritual director and the other friend knew just the right person. That person has been a wellspring of prayer and discernment for me as I have walked through a re-invention in my life.
At times we met once a week, mostly once a month. When he’s away we write old-fashioned letters. He asks me what stirring in my soul, what I’m praying about and what I’m reading. He listens, asks me tough questions, tells me stories and prays.
A good spiritual director will pray with you and guide you to the questions God is asking in your life. A good spiritual director will show you the path of God through steadfast love, mercy and goodness. And a good spiritual director will lead in humility, while at the same time, calling on you to be humble before God. And while spiritual direction may not be for everyone, it is something to strongly consider. It’s a tradition that our Church didn’t offer for some time, but now we are moving back into the ways of the ancient tradition.
Advent is an excellent time of the year for self-reflection. Where has the journey taken you? And where might God be leading you? Could a spiritual director shine some of God’s light on the path?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Stepping stones across turbulent times - a Rule of Life
Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost, the end of the Church year and on this day we celebrate Christ the King. It can be a tough assignment to preach Jesus as the King when we spend so much time learning how Jesus is one with the weak, poor and lonely. Jesus, who gains his riches in poverty, his power in weakness, his glory in crucifixtion – this is Christ the King we worship today.
November 22 also happens to be the day we honor C.S. Lewis, Anglican author and scholar. Lewis is probably best remembered for his wonderful works, The Chronicles of Narnia and for Mere Christianity.
Lewis’ life was a picture of the spiritual pilgrimage. His life was complex, contradictory and somewhat messy, leaving behind strangely conflicting stories. Lewis died four years after his beloved Joy has passed away from cancer. His death, though, was blinded from public notice because on that same day in 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
I love this image of Lewis’ lifetime of conversion from Surprised by Joy.
“Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie is wait for him on every side…. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ To me…. they might as well talk about the mouse’s search for the cat. You must picture me all alone in (my) room, night after night…. the steady unrelenting approach of (God) whom I earnestly desired not to meet…. (finally) I gave in, and admitted that God was God: perhaps, that night, (I was) the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
But of all of Lewis’ fascinating life and work, for me, the most moving was A Grief Observed. First watching two versions of the film and then reading the book, I continue to be touched by the raw and authentic way in which Lewis confronts the pain of losing his wife.
“And then one or the other dies. And we think of this love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid-career…something truncated…. I wonder…. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure. We are ‘taken out of ourselves’ by the loved once while she is here. Then comes the tragic figure of the dance in which we must learn to be still taken out of ourselves though the bodily presence is withdrawn, to love the very Her, and not fall back to loving our past, or our memory, or our sorrow or our relief from sorrow, or our own love.”
How do we survive our pain and our loss? The Christian life endures no less pain and grief than the non-Christian, the question is, how will the Christian survive through the roughest storms of life?
Lewis does not offer a trite answer, nor does the writer of Hebrews. Lewis uses the word obedience and the writer of Hebrews uses a similar word, discipline. They use these words to find meaning for patterning our lives in order to find surety in a turbulent and violent world.
It’s discipline that sustains the athlete under the stress of competition. It’s discipline that provides the confidence for the musician during their performance. It’s discipline that calms the head and steadies the nerves of the surgeon. Discipline is the resource for living under duress.
The monastic brothers knew this well. Not only did their community follow the Rule of Benedict. As well the monks developed a personal Rule of Life, a discipline for living their lives. The Rule of Life is form of spiritual discipline. It’s also the assurance that the weight, which I now bear, will not crush me.
The writer of Hebrews, in chapter thirteen, is providing us with a framework for the development of a Rule of Life, a way in which to live a disciplined Christian life. It reads like a prescription for living:
• love one another
• show hospitality to strangers
• remember those in prison and those being tortured
• keep the marriage bed sacred
• don’t be greedy, instead be content
• imitate your faith leaders
• do good
• pray
• remember, the way to life is through the Cross of Jesus
Imagine how life might be ordered if we established and kept these simple rules as a pattern for life. What if our community committed together to keep this rule of life, how would the world around us be changed? Suppose these were the stones you used when crossing a dangerous river; would they get you safely to other side?
When faced with a decision, a crossroads or a crisis, what is our first reaction? What holds us together when the winds of life are trying to rip us apart? When life is trying to crush us, what do we do?
C.S. Lewis and the writer of Hebrews both pointed to the life of Jesus Christ as the model for our own lives. It was through Jesus that both writers found support for a daily life of discipline that would carry them through the trial of the fires in their lives. These writers followed the humble Jesus.
Let me encourage you to develop your own Rule of Life, a simple and brief list with no more than five items. Model your list after the humble Jesus, who found strength in weakness, riches in poverty, and power in the Cross. Your Rule can build the discipline in your life that will act as stepping stones across the troubled waters of your life.
November 22 also happens to be the day we honor C.S. Lewis, Anglican author and scholar. Lewis is probably best remembered for his wonderful works, The Chronicles of Narnia and for Mere Christianity.
Lewis’ life was a picture of the spiritual pilgrimage. His life was complex, contradictory and somewhat messy, leaving behind strangely conflicting stories. Lewis died four years after his beloved Joy has passed away from cancer. His death, though, was blinded from public notice because on that same day in 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
I love this image of Lewis’ lifetime of conversion from Surprised by Joy.
“Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie is wait for him on every side…. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ To me…. they might as well talk about the mouse’s search for the cat. You must picture me all alone in (my) room, night after night…. the steady unrelenting approach of (God) whom I earnestly desired not to meet…. (finally) I gave in, and admitted that God was God: perhaps, that night, (I was) the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
But of all of Lewis’ fascinating life and work, for me, the most moving was A Grief Observed. First watching two versions of the film and then reading the book, I continue to be touched by the raw and authentic way in which Lewis confronts the pain of losing his wife.
“And then one or the other dies. And we think of this love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid-career…something truncated…. I wonder…. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure. We are ‘taken out of ourselves’ by the loved once while she is here. Then comes the tragic figure of the dance in which we must learn to be still taken out of ourselves though the bodily presence is withdrawn, to love the very Her, and not fall back to loving our past, or our memory, or our sorrow or our relief from sorrow, or our own love.”
How do we survive our pain and our loss? The Christian life endures no less pain and grief than the non-Christian, the question is, how will the Christian survive through the roughest storms of life?
Lewis does not offer a trite answer, nor does the writer of Hebrews. Lewis uses the word obedience and the writer of Hebrews uses a similar word, discipline. They use these words to find meaning for patterning our lives in order to find surety in a turbulent and violent world.
It’s discipline that sustains the athlete under the stress of competition. It’s discipline that provides the confidence for the musician during their performance. It’s discipline that calms the head and steadies the nerves of the surgeon. Discipline is the resource for living under duress.
The monastic brothers knew this well. Not only did their community follow the Rule of Benedict. As well the monks developed a personal Rule of Life, a discipline for living their lives. The Rule of Life is form of spiritual discipline. It’s also the assurance that the weight, which I now bear, will not crush me.
The writer of Hebrews, in chapter thirteen, is providing us with a framework for the development of a Rule of Life, a way in which to live a disciplined Christian life. It reads like a prescription for living:
• love one another
• show hospitality to strangers
• remember those in prison and those being tortured
• keep the marriage bed sacred
• don’t be greedy, instead be content
• imitate your faith leaders
• do good
• pray
• remember, the way to life is through the Cross of Jesus
Imagine how life might be ordered if we established and kept these simple rules as a pattern for life. What if our community committed together to keep this rule of life, how would the world around us be changed? Suppose these were the stones you used when crossing a dangerous river; would they get you safely to other side?
When faced with a decision, a crossroads or a crisis, what is our first reaction? What holds us together when the winds of life are trying to rip us apart? When life is trying to crush us, what do we do?
C.S. Lewis and the writer of Hebrews both pointed to the life of Jesus Christ as the model for our own lives. It was through Jesus that both writers found support for a daily life of discipline that would carry them through the trial of the fires in their lives. These writers followed the humble Jesus.
Let me encourage you to develop your own Rule of Life, a simple and brief list with no more than five items. Model your list after the humble Jesus, who found strength in weakness, riches in poverty, and power in the Cross. Your Rule can build the discipline in your life that will act as stepping stones across the troubled waters of your life.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Provoking
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time in our family. I really enjoy Thanksgiving because it is a time that our entire family gets together. It’s the one holiday when Cathy and my family get together. We aren’t distracted by customs and traditions we simply get together and enjoy one another’s company. Thanksgiving is the embodiment of the reality that our family is a community. Whoever shows up first starts the daylong celebration. Everyone brings your own food and is ready to feed everyone else who arrives. The food is wonderful and the wine is fantastic. In fact we have such a large family gathering that we have to wash dishes as the day goes on. We spend the day cooking, eating, drinking wine and serving each other, a sacred and holy holiday.
As I began thinking about entering the process of becoming a priest, my mentor priest told me if I wanted to become a priest I had to learn to cook for 150. Then she handed me a copy of the film Babette’s Feast. “Here,” she said, “watch this and learn how to be a priest. When you get it, come back and we’ll talk about it.” If you don’t get it, keep watching and don’t come back until you do.
The movie opens with Babette arriving in a small boat at the rocky shore of Denmark. The grey waves lap against the black and white sands. She steps into the smoky cloud covered town. For a mysterious and unknown reason, she seeks refuge from the French civil war. In Denmark Babette is taken in by two sisters, daughters of an austere and fundamentalist pastor. The daughters have committed themselves to continuing the legend and practice of their father. The sisters provide Babette with gracious, though sparse hospitality. Babette does her best to fit into the black and white community. One day, shockingly, Babette receives word she has won a lottery. While most of us might decide to return home, she decides to prepare the most elegant banquet for her host and their friends, a thanksgiving for their hospitality.
She orders the finest china, cutlery and the exquisite delicate foods. She orders the sweetest wines and the darkest coffees. Babette spends all that she has entertaining her uncertain and shocked diners. It’s a sacred film of holy proportion.
As her guests dine on her sacrifice the seen of grey slowly turns to the joy of color. Somehow is service Babette’s cloud is lifted.
Sr. Joan Chittister writes, “We may think we are a community or assume we are a family but if we do not serve one another we are, at best, a collection of people who live alone together….”In Benedict’s dining room,” she continues, “where everyone serves and everyone washes feet and everyone returns the utensils clean and intact for the next person’s use, love and accountability become the fulcrum of community life.”
But, community life, family life, is often complicated and very difficult to live out in peace and service to one another.
The writer of Hebrews is addressing his congregation because of just such problems. The congregation is in decline. People have stopped coming to worship because the risk is too great.
The preacher in Hebrews has spent four chapters trying to persuade us to see Jesus as the new high priest. By Jesus’ holy actions of self-emptying on the cross, God has written a new covenant on our hearts, a covenant of forgiveness.
The covenant of God’s forgiveness binds us into a community, “adephoi” in Greek. Now the writer of Hebrews begins to outline how we are to live together as a community.
The writer designs a liturgy for our worship that will remind us of our commitment to God and to one another. As friends, we enter the sanctuary through Jesus, the flesh, the Eucharist. We are washed with pure water, baptism. We hold to our confession of the faith, hope and love, the Creed. And we provoke and encourage one another to love and to do good deeds.
To provoke and encourage, that sounds somewhat ominous. Provoke isn’t a word we use in the Episcopal Church very much. That word gets reserved for our more Evangelical brothers and sisters.
In this particular case, the word “provoke,” means to stimulate, in other words, to stimulate us into think about how we live in community.
I’m a pretty transparent person. I live my life out in the open for the most part. It’s no secret that my language can turn pretty colorful without any real reason, just because that’s the way I am.
I’ve been confronted about my language numerous times over my life. My high school coach tried using, “what would your mother say if she heard you talk like that” tactic. That didn’t work. During my coaching days at Grand Canyon I was confronted by pastors, administrators and even students, all concerned that I wasn’t being a Christian when I let “those words” come out of my mouth. That didn’t work either.
It was very liberating when I came into the Episcopal Church. About the worse thing I got when I dropped some expletives was a raised eyebrow. I was told not to use certain words from the pulpit. I figured I could manage that, though, admittedly, that’s why I write out my sermons and stick very closely to my text. So far, so good.
Last year, I got a very gentle reminder from a young parent in our community, telling me, in half jest that they would prefer not to have to explain to their parents that their grandchildren had learned to swear from their priest. Love does provoke. I understand. But, still when I’m not around young children I usually take the filter off and just talk.
The other day, someone who I deeply respect, asked me watch my language around certain groups. Mostly, this person told me, was because people can’t hear what I have to say because they stop listening to me when they have been offended by my language. The person went on to repeat a story I had told a group of people. The story was about how angry I gotten at someone who had mistreated by sister. The person had gotten the story upside down. The repeated story was not what I wanted to do to someone who had mistreated my sister but instead what I wanted to do to my sister. That was a crushing blow. If someone heard that instead of wanting to protect my sister I instead wanted to hurt my sister, well, that is provoking me to rethink how I live my and to love to go and do good deeds.
These two people are examples of people acting out of mature love and in Christ-like service for the betterment of the community. These are people who have set the table, served the most exquisite meal, cleared the table and washed the dishes, and then putting them all away.
Usually I let everyone connect the dots, but, I think in this instance, I’m going to at least try. If you heard me say that I am condoning you expressing your opinions that someone has offended you personally and you want them to change their behavior because it would be best for you – well, then you mis-heard me.
In the last two situations I cited to you neither person was personally offended. Actually, they were trying to help the community. The community of Christ is a community of love and good deeds. Love and good deeds is not pushing people away from the feast, but instead, indeed, it is inviting people to the greatest feast of all – the feast where we are the servants, the hosts for all the guests.
Provoking others in love brings them to the Table – it never pushes them away.
As I began thinking about entering the process of becoming a priest, my mentor priest told me if I wanted to become a priest I had to learn to cook for 150. Then she handed me a copy of the film Babette’s Feast. “Here,” she said, “watch this and learn how to be a priest. When you get it, come back and we’ll talk about it.” If you don’t get it, keep watching and don’t come back until you do.
The movie opens with Babette arriving in a small boat at the rocky shore of Denmark. The grey waves lap against the black and white sands. She steps into the smoky cloud covered town. For a mysterious and unknown reason, she seeks refuge from the French civil war. In Denmark Babette is taken in by two sisters, daughters of an austere and fundamentalist pastor. The daughters have committed themselves to continuing the legend and practice of their father. The sisters provide Babette with gracious, though sparse hospitality. Babette does her best to fit into the black and white community. One day, shockingly, Babette receives word she has won a lottery. While most of us might decide to return home, she decides to prepare the most elegant banquet for her host and their friends, a thanksgiving for their hospitality.
She orders the finest china, cutlery and the exquisite delicate foods. She orders the sweetest wines and the darkest coffees. Babette spends all that she has entertaining her uncertain and shocked diners. It’s a sacred film of holy proportion.
As her guests dine on her sacrifice the seen of grey slowly turns to the joy of color. Somehow is service Babette’s cloud is lifted.
Sr. Joan Chittister writes, “We may think we are a community or assume we are a family but if we do not serve one another we are, at best, a collection of people who live alone together….”In Benedict’s dining room,” she continues, “where everyone serves and everyone washes feet and everyone returns the utensils clean and intact for the next person’s use, love and accountability become the fulcrum of community life.”
But, community life, family life, is often complicated and very difficult to live out in peace and service to one another.
The writer of Hebrews is addressing his congregation because of just such problems. The congregation is in decline. People have stopped coming to worship because the risk is too great.
The preacher in Hebrews has spent four chapters trying to persuade us to see Jesus as the new high priest. By Jesus’ holy actions of self-emptying on the cross, God has written a new covenant on our hearts, a covenant of forgiveness.
The covenant of God’s forgiveness binds us into a community, “adephoi” in Greek. Now the writer of Hebrews begins to outline how we are to live together as a community.
The writer designs a liturgy for our worship that will remind us of our commitment to God and to one another. As friends, we enter the sanctuary through Jesus, the flesh, the Eucharist. We are washed with pure water, baptism. We hold to our confession of the faith, hope and love, the Creed. And we provoke and encourage one another to love and to do good deeds.
To provoke and encourage, that sounds somewhat ominous. Provoke isn’t a word we use in the Episcopal Church very much. That word gets reserved for our more Evangelical brothers and sisters.
In this particular case, the word “provoke,” means to stimulate, in other words, to stimulate us into think about how we live in community.
I’m a pretty transparent person. I live my life out in the open for the most part. It’s no secret that my language can turn pretty colorful without any real reason, just because that’s the way I am.
I’ve been confronted about my language numerous times over my life. My high school coach tried using, “what would your mother say if she heard you talk like that” tactic. That didn’t work. During my coaching days at Grand Canyon I was confronted by pastors, administrators and even students, all concerned that I wasn’t being a Christian when I let “those words” come out of my mouth. That didn’t work either.
It was very liberating when I came into the Episcopal Church. About the worse thing I got when I dropped some expletives was a raised eyebrow. I was told not to use certain words from the pulpit. I figured I could manage that, though, admittedly, that’s why I write out my sermons and stick very closely to my text. So far, so good.
Last year, I got a very gentle reminder from a young parent in our community, telling me, in half jest that they would prefer not to have to explain to their parents that their grandchildren had learned to swear from their priest. Love does provoke. I understand. But, still when I’m not around young children I usually take the filter off and just talk.
The other day, someone who I deeply respect, asked me watch my language around certain groups. Mostly, this person told me, was because people can’t hear what I have to say because they stop listening to me when they have been offended by my language. The person went on to repeat a story I had told a group of people. The story was about how angry I gotten at someone who had mistreated by sister. The person had gotten the story upside down. The repeated story was not what I wanted to do to someone who had mistreated my sister but instead what I wanted to do to my sister. That was a crushing blow. If someone heard that instead of wanting to protect my sister I instead wanted to hurt my sister, well, that is provoking me to rethink how I live my and to love to go and do good deeds.
These two people are examples of people acting out of mature love and in Christ-like service for the betterment of the community. These are people who have set the table, served the most exquisite meal, cleared the table and washed the dishes, and then putting them all away.
Usually I let everyone connect the dots, but, I think in this instance, I’m going to at least try. If you heard me say that I am condoning you expressing your opinions that someone has offended you personally and you want them to change their behavior because it would be best for you – well, then you mis-heard me.
In the last two situations I cited to you neither person was personally offended. Actually, they were trying to help the community. The community of Christ is a community of love and good deeds. Love and good deeds is not pushing people away from the feast, but instead, indeed, it is inviting people to the greatest feast of all – the feast where we are the servants, the hosts for all the guests.
Provoking others in love brings them to the Table – it never pushes them away.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
God's Economy - Fr. Kate Bradsen
Sermon by Fr. Kate Bradsen November 8, 2009 St. Augustine's
I Kings 17:8-16,
Mark 12:38-44
Do you ever wonder why we live in a society where taking advantage of another person is acceptable?
I had to get some car repairs done this week. Minor things that I had put off for too long and finally had to deal with. The guy told me on the phone it would take half an hour. It took two full hours. And of course it cost more than twice what I had originally been told.
Now, I have an uncle who worked most of his life as an auto mechanic. I’m not trying to knock people in that profession at all. Plus, I know what a pain people can be when they want things cheaper and faster than is humanly possible. But I couldn’t help but wonder as the man wondered in and out of the waiting room, having casual conversations with the various other men who stopped in to do business: would he treat me this way if I were a man?
Being a young woman with no immediate connection to a man, I understand why the Hebrew word for widow translates into “one who has no voice”
Like so many of the people who society deems as less powerful, I have wandered into more than one situation where I have questioned whether my experience would have been different if I belonged to a category more “powerful”
But what disappoints me the most about the whole thing is that it’s acceptable. It’s okay for companies to rip off people who don’t know any better, especially if those people are women. It’s okay for the market to devalue houses in neighborhoods where most people are not white. It’s okay to charge poor people more money for basic things that they desperately need.
Because we’re about making money. Money first. People second.
I am required to teach my students about Adam Smith, who is in many ways the founder of modern capitalism. (I am a 8th grade social studies teacher not an economist, so if I don’t explain this correctly, don’t shoot me). Adam Smith believed that our economy is built on self interest, and that if people are allowed to pursue that without interference, an “invisible hand” would guide the free market to an outcome satisfactory for all involved.
“Like God?” one of my students asked, referring to the invisible hand.
Maybe. And maybe not.
In today’s gospel, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for taking advantage of widows. For taking money from those who have no voice. And just in time along comes a widow giving the last of her money to the temple.
I’ve always heard this story as praise for the widow. Not surprising that the church would praise a person for giving all the money they had to the church. And. If Gil asks, I am in no way discouraging that. But when I read this gospel most recently, I noticed that Jesus doesn’t offer praise for this woman’s action. He is explicit in his condemnation of those who would exploit those who are powerless. But all he says about the widow is that she put in more than all the wealthy folks, since she put in almost everything she had and the rich people were just giving away the extra they had. It’s an observation, not necessarily an evaluation.
And it’s true.
Even today it always amazes me how people who live off next to nothing are able to be so much more generous than those people who- at least in my mind- have an obvious surplus. We see it so much in all of the craziness that is going on in our political scene today. The economy is getting better- if you’re a big business that just got bailed out. If you’re a person who lost their house and still doesn’t have a job—well it seems like your economy doesn’t count.
Not in our society anyway.
Jesus didn’t have a job. My Lord and Savior was unemployed.
I mean, I know he was supposed to be a carpenter, but do you really think between all those miracles and healings and teachings he had time to make a table? If he worked at all, it was sporadically.
You would think, being God, Jesus would incarnate as a big wig money making man. If money is so important.
But our God incarnate was broke and hungry.
When all those thousands of people were hungry, so was Jesus. I’m sure there are many people who could write a check to feed four thousand people- probably some people in this room could. But Jesus couldn’t. I mean, I know they didn’t write checks back then, and the miracle was way better than writing a check, but the point is: Jesus was hungry too.
He lived like most of us do—paycheck to paycheck so to speak. Like he told his disciples to live- nothing but the shoes on his feet and the tunic on his back. Taking what was given to him- living off the generosity of the land.
When Elijah asks the widow for bread, he was just doing the same thing.
I have a kind of negative reaction to that story. I wish it had been the woman’s idea to be generous. I mean the power dynamic is so obviously unequal. And the story is just weird. Here is this widow objecting strongly to sharing the little bit that she has. Elijah insists. She obeys without further comment. Her food miraculously extends into infinity. She offers no reaction. It’s like after she insists that she can’t feed him—and frankly I’m with her in that moment- why should a poor widow have to give her food to some random prophet—after she says no, Elijah says do it, and then she sinks back into the background.
Argh.
But you have to look deeper. If you read the psalms. If you listen to the prophets-to the stories Jesus tells, then you know that God takes care of the widows. God takes care of the ravens. And it is the ravens (in the first miraculous feeding of Elijah) and the widows who feed the people of God.
That lady thought she was going to die. She was literally on her way home to give the last food she had to her son and then lay down and die. She was one of those people who had no voice. The land was in a famine, and just like in today’s depression (or recession if you want to call it that), the people without voice are hit the hardest—they are the first to go.
But our God honors those who live on the margin. Our God lived among us as one who had no guarantee of where his next meal would come from. Over and over again through the teachings of the prophets, in the psalms and stories, we hear that God delivers those who are oppressed. God takes care of the widows and the orphans. God looks out for the strangers and the poor. God’s economy is not the economy that is measured by how the stocks are doing. God’s economy is a measure of how well we care for those who have nothing.
The fact that our society exploits the powerless for profit is actually intertwined with the fact that so many of us with money believe we have nothing. If people could live like Jesus, really believe that God will provide for each of us the way God takes care of the smallest things in creation, then they wouldn’t have to exploit people, right? All of this ridiculous behavior comes from fear. Fear that we will not have enough. We have to take what we can get from whoever we can get it from at whatever cost, because the more we have, the better we will be.
Not in God’s economy. In God’s economy, we have to believe that everything we have ever been given is a gift from God. We have to be generous, even when we think we have nothing. We have to live this way, even when we believe we cannot.
It’s funny because letting go of money is probably the hardest leap of faith we ever make. God takes care of the birds and the flowers and God will take care of you. You can share what you have, because you will get more. It’s not a metaphor. It’s the truth. I know you might not believe me. I know how scary it is. And I am by no means advocating that you go home and sit in your living room and wait for manna to rain down from heaven. You got to work with God. But you have to live without fear. You have to remember that it’s just money. As Tracy Chapman says “Moneys only paper, only ink; we’ll destroy ourselves if we can't agree; How the world turns; Who made the sun? Who owns the sea?
The world we know will fall piece by piece.”
So let it fall. Let go of in depth analysis of economic recovery. Let go of the idea that profit matters more than people. And let God’s kingdom come.
I Kings 17:8-16,
Mark 12:38-44
Do you ever wonder why we live in a society where taking advantage of another person is acceptable?
I had to get some car repairs done this week. Minor things that I had put off for too long and finally had to deal with. The guy told me on the phone it would take half an hour. It took two full hours. And of course it cost more than twice what I had originally been told.
Now, I have an uncle who worked most of his life as an auto mechanic. I’m not trying to knock people in that profession at all. Plus, I know what a pain people can be when they want things cheaper and faster than is humanly possible. But I couldn’t help but wonder as the man wondered in and out of the waiting room, having casual conversations with the various other men who stopped in to do business: would he treat me this way if I were a man?
Being a young woman with no immediate connection to a man, I understand why the Hebrew word for widow translates into “one who has no voice”
Like so many of the people who society deems as less powerful, I have wandered into more than one situation where I have questioned whether my experience would have been different if I belonged to a category more “powerful”
But what disappoints me the most about the whole thing is that it’s acceptable. It’s okay for companies to rip off people who don’t know any better, especially if those people are women. It’s okay for the market to devalue houses in neighborhoods where most people are not white. It’s okay to charge poor people more money for basic things that they desperately need.
Because we’re about making money. Money first. People second.
I am required to teach my students about Adam Smith, who is in many ways the founder of modern capitalism. (I am a 8th grade social studies teacher not an economist, so if I don’t explain this correctly, don’t shoot me). Adam Smith believed that our economy is built on self interest, and that if people are allowed to pursue that without interference, an “invisible hand” would guide the free market to an outcome satisfactory for all involved.
“Like God?” one of my students asked, referring to the invisible hand.
Maybe. And maybe not.
In today’s gospel, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for taking advantage of widows. For taking money from those who have no voice. And just in time along comes a widow giving the last of her money to the temple.
I’ve always heard this story as praise for the widow. Not surprising that the church would praise a person for giving all the money they had to the church. And. If Gil asks, I am in no way discouraging that. But when I read this gospel most recently, I noticed that Jesus doesn’t offer praise for this woman’s action. He is explicit in his condemnation of those who would exploit those who are powerless. But all he says about the widow is that she put in more than all the wealthy folks, since she put in almost everything she had and the rich people were just giving away the extra they had. It’s an observation, not necessarily an evaluation.
And it’s true.
Even today it always amazes me how people who live off next to nothing are able to be so much more generous than those people who- at least in my mind- have an obvious surplus. We see it so much in all of the craziness that is going on in our political scene today. The economy is getting better- if you’re a big business that just got bailed out. If you’re a person who lost their house and still doesn’t have a job—well it seems like your economy doesn’t count.
Not in our society anyway.
Jesus didn’t have a job. My Lord and Savior was unemployed.
I mean, I know he was supposed to be a carpenter, but do you really think between all those miracles and healings and teachings he had time to make a table? If he worked at all, it was sporadically.
You would think, being God, Jesus would incarnate as a big wig money making man. If money is so important.
But our God incarnate was broke and hungry.
When all those thousands of people were hungry, so was Jesus. I’m sure there are many people who could write a check to feed four thousand people- probably some people in this room could. But Jesus couldn’t. I mean, I know they didn’t write checks back then, and the miracle was way better than writing a check, but the point is: Jesus was hungry too.
He lived like most of us do—paycheck to paycheck so to speak. Like he told his disciples to live- nothing but the shoes on his feet and the tunic on his back. Taking what was given to him- living off the generosity of the land.
When Elijah asks the widow for bread, he was just doing the same thing.
I have a kind of negative reaction to that story. I wish it had been the woman’s idea to be generous. I mean the power dynamic is so obviously unequal. And the story is just weird. Here is this widow objecting strongly to sharing the little bit that she has. Elijah insists. She obeys without further comment. Her food miraculously extends into infinity. She offers no reaction. It’s like after she insists that she can’t feed him—and frankly I’m with her in that moment- why should a poor widow have to give her food to some random prophet—after she says no, Elijah says do it, and then she sinks back into the background.
Argh.
But you have to look deeper. If you read the psalms. If you listen to the prophets-to the stories Jesus tells, then you know that God takes care of the widows. God takes care of the ravens. And it is the ravens (in the first miraculous feeding of Elijah) and the widows who feed the people of God.
That lady thought she was going to die. She was literally on her way home to give the last food she had to her son and then lay down and die. She was one of those people who had no voice. The land was in a famine, and just like in today’s depression (or recession if you want to call it that), the people without voice are hit the hardest—they are the first to go.
But our God honors those who live on the margin. Our God lived among us as one who had no guarantee of where his next meal would come from. Over and over again through the teachings of the prophets, in the psalms and stories, we hear that God delivers those who are oppressed. God takes care of the widows and the orphans. God looks out for the strangers and the poor. God’s economy is not the economy that is measured by how the stocks are doing. God’s economy is a measure of how well we care for those who have nothing.
The fact that our society exploits the powerless for profit is actually intertwined with the fact that so many of us with money believe we have nothing. If people could live like Jesus, really believe that God will provide for each of us the way God takes care of the smallest things in creation, then they wouldn’t have to exploit people, right? All of this ridiculous behavior comes from fear. Fear that we will not have enough. We have to take what we can get from whoever we can get it from at whatever cost, because the more we have, the better we will be.
Not in God’s economy. In God’s economy, we have to believe that everything we have ever been given is a gift from God. We have to be generous, even when we think we have nothing. We have to live this way, even when we believe we cannot.
It’s funny because letting go of money is probably the hardest leap of faith we ever make. God takes care of the birds and the flowers and God will take care of you. You can share what you have, because you will get more. It’s not a metaphor. It’s the truth. I know you might not believe me. I know how scary it is. And I am by no means advocating that you go home and sit in your living room and wait for manna to rain down from heaven. You got to work with God. But you have to live without fear. You have to remember that it’s just money. As Tracy Chapman says “Moneys only paper, only ink; we’ll destroy ourselves if we can't agree; How the world turns; Who made the sun? Who owns the sea?
The world we know will fall piece by piece.”
So let it fall. Let go of in depth analysis of economic recovery. Let go of the idea that profit matters more than people. And let God’s kingdom come.
Monday, November 02, 2009
A part of the bigger family
When I coached college baseball I stressed to my players that they were a part of something bigger than them selves. While I know that they had dreams and goals of playing professional baseball, the most important commitment at that moment and time was to give them selves over to the reality that not only were they a part of this particular team, they were also a part of the Canyon team that comprised all the players that had played in the many years before them.
We all are a part of a community bigger than ourselves. We belong to our families. We belong to St. Augustine’s and some belong to St. Brigid’s Community. We are members of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We are Christians. Most importantly we are a part of the Kingdom of God. We are part of the communion of all the saints.
Our continuing Bible study of Hebrews is offering us a unique vision of the earliest Christian community. The book of Hebrews is a sermon, or a book, written to a community in or around Rome. The book was probably written to a community of Jewish and Gentile Christians.
The writer of Hebrews wants to remind that we are part of large family, the Jewish family, the family of our heritage. Jesus came not to replace the faith of our father Abraham but instead to complete that faith through Jesus’ own faith.
In chapter nine, verse one, we hear about the original practices of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. The worship and met God in a portable tent, not the permanent Temple in Jerusalem. They were wandering aliens in a foreign land. The writer of Hebrews was reminding his readers in Italy that too were aliens in a foreign land.
In the first room of the tent was a golden Lampstand. It had three pairs of branches with elaborate floral decorations, representing a sacred tree symbolizing God’s unseen presence in his earthly shrine; later it came to represent light and life eternal. Also in this room was the table for the Bread of the Presence. Bread of the Presence (showbread or shewbread), 12 loaves of unleavened bread baked with flour, was placed on the table in two rows of six with frankincense placed between them. The bread was an offering to God, fresh bread placed on altar each Sabbath. The old bread was eaten by the priests.
Golden altar of incense stood between the first tent and Holy of Holies. The smoke of the incense purified the High Priest as he entered into the holy place once a year.
Behind the second curtain – the Holy of Holies, only the high priest could enter once a year to make offerings for the sins of the people – the Ark of the Covenant (which contained the tablets of the law) resided in the Holy of Holies.
There was a golden urn containing the manna from heaven given to the people in the wilderness (much like our aumbry). There was also Aaron’s almond branch that budded – similar to the Bishop’s crozier.
The Mercy seat, the golden top of the Ark of the Covenant, the seat of God, the Presence of God – the place where atonement or kapporeth was made, the sprinkling of blood on the Day of Atonement, resided in the Holy of Holies. And two guardian cherubim sat above the Ark
I hope you can see the similarities between our Church design and our Eucharistic practice. Why do these similarities exist? We are a part of this larger family, the Israelites, a family of people who worship as exiles in a foreign land.
The writer of Hebrews now moves to the mystery of Jesus as the great high priest. Jesus has entered the spiritual realm of the Holy Presence of God to sanctify us – make us holy – to purify (release from guilt or burden) our conscience (from dead works, sin) to worship the living God (pray to God). Jesus is the mediator of the “new covenant” with God.
It is the faith “of” Jesus Christ say Karl Barth, (Dogmatics IV, I, page 281,) “His (Jesus) sacrifice means that the time of being has dawned in place of that of signifying – of the being of man as a faithful partner in covenant with God, and therefore of his being at peace with God and therefore of the being of the man reconciled with Him (God) and converted to Him (God).”
Our worship is a continuation of the Jewish cultus, it is complete not done away with, now with Jesus as our High Priest. “Worship is the communal cultivation of an alternative construction of society and history.” (John Howard Yoder) We, as the priesthood of all believers, enter the tent and walk with Jesus our great high priest, into the holy of holies, into the presence of God.
We are being invited to worship our High Priest, God, Son and Spirit – the suffering servant who brings justice to the Kingdom. Our worship must be a place that forms and informs our lives in our community. We are being shaped into a new cultural, a new social and a new political order. We are called to pattern our lives after our High Priest, that is, live our lives in humility, to empty our lives, by putting others first and live into a new politic that puts God first. In other words, we are a counter culture, a counter empire (Douglas Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals). We worship God, not our family, not our Church and not our country. Yet, it is our differences, our different languages, our different cultures, our different ethnicities that influence and, yes, make our worship complete.
Let me ask you this – how is your life shaped by worship? How does Jesus Christ inform your life? Is there anything about your life that is different because you are a practicing Christian?
We are a counter culture. While we are called to love our neighbors, that very love will be offensive. Try loving your neighbor and see how many friends you make. God is calling us into a transformative relationship, expressed in our worship, lived in our practice. Jesus is calling us into a new culture, not leaving our differences behind, but bringing what completes us.
We all are a part of a community bigger than ourselves. We belong to our families. We belong to St. Augustine’s and some belong to St. Brigid’s Community. We are members of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We are Christians. Most importantly we are a part of the Kingdom of God. We are part of the communion of all the saints.
Our continuing Bible study of Hebrews is offering us a unique vision of the earliest Christian community. The book of Hebrews is a sermon, or a book, written to a community in or around Rome. The book was probably written to a community of Jewish and Gentile Christians.
The writer of Hebrews wants to remind that we are part of large family, the Jewish family, the family of our heritage. Jesus came not to replace the faith of our father Abraham but instead to complete that faith through Jesus’ own faith.
In chapter nine, verse one, we hear about the original practices of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. The worship and met God in a portable tent, not the permanent Temple in Jerusalem. They were wandering aliens in a foreign land. The writer of Hebrews was reminding his readers in Italy that too were aliens in a foreign land.
In the first room of the tent was a golden Lampstand. It had three pairs of branches with elaborate floral decorations, representing a sacred tree symbolizing God’s unseen presence in his earthly shrine; later it came to represent light and life eternal. Also in this room was the table for the Bread of the Presence. Bread of the Presence (showbread or shewbread), 12 loaves of unleavened bread baked with flour, was placed on the table in two rows of six with frankincense placed between them. The bread was an offering to God, fresh bread placed on altar each Sabbath. The old bread was eaten by the priests.
Golden altar of incense stood between the first tent and Holy of Holies. The smoke of the incense purified the High Priest as he entered into the holy place once a year.
Behind the second curtain – the Holy of Holies, only the high priest could enter once a year to make offerings for the sins of the people – the Ark of the Covenant (which contained the tablets of the law) resided in the Holy of Holies.
There was a golden urn containing the manna from heaven given to the people in the wilderness (much like our aumbry). There was also Aaron’s almond branch that budded – similar to the Bishop’s crozier.
The Mercy seat, the golden top of the Ark of the Covenant, the seat of God, the Presence of God – the place where atonement or kapporeth was made, the sprinkling of blood on the Day of Atonement, resided in the Holy of Holies. And two guardian cherubim sat above the Ark
I hope you can see the similarities between our Church design and our Eucharistic practice. Why do these similarities exist? We are a part of this larger family, the Israelites, a family of people who worship as exiles in a foreign land.
The writer of Hebrews now moves to the mystery of Jesus as the great high priest. Jesus has entered the spiritual realm of the Holy Presence of God to sanctify us – make us holy – to purify (release from guilt or burden) our conscience (from dead works, sin) to worship the living God (pray to God). Jesus is the mediator of the “new covenant” with God.
It is the faith “of” Jesus Christ say Karl Barth, (Dogmatics IV, I, page 281,) “His (Jesus) sacrifice means that the time of being has dawned in place of that of signifying – of the being of man as a faithful partner in covenant with God, and therefore of his being at peace with God and therefore of the being of the man reconciled with Him (God) and converted to Him (God).”
Our worship is a continuation of the Jewish cultus, it is complete not done away with, now with Jesus as our High Priest. “Worship is the communal cultivation of an alternative construction of society and history.” (John Howard Yoder) We, as the priesthood of all believers, enter the tent and walk with Jesus our great high priest, into the holy of holies, into the presence of God.
We are being invited to worship our High Priest, God, Son and Spirit – the suffering servant who brings justice to the Kingdom. Our worship must be a place that forms and informs our lives in our community. We are being shaped into a new cultural, a new social and a new political order. We are called to pattern our lives after our High Priest, that is, live our lives in humility, to empty our lives, by putting others first and live into a new politic that puts God first. In other words, we are a counter culture, a counter empire (Douglas Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals). We worship God, not our family, not our Church and not our country. Yet, it is our differences, our different languages, our different cultures, our different ethnicities that influence and, yes, make our worship complete.
Let me ask you this – how is your life shaped by worship? How does Jesus Christ inform your life? Is there anything about your life that is different because you are a practicing Christian?
We are a counter culture. While we are called to love our neighbors, that very love will be offensive. Try loving your neighbor and see how many friends you make. God is calling us into a transformative relationship, expressed in our worship, lived in our practice. Jesus is calling us into a new culture, not leaving our differences behind, but bringing what completes us.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Blindness by Fr. Kate Bradsen
Sermon by Fr. Kate Bradsen preached at St. Augustine's October 25, 2009
One of the members of our community is two. In between her many dress changes and art projects, she is a great spiritual teacher. At a recent Sabbath meal, she decided to pretend to be a lizard, like the one we saw on the window. Someone told her that lizards ate mosquitoes, so she dutifully began eating imaginary mosquitoes. But then something happened, if only in her mind, and she ran out of imaginary mosquitoes. She became instantly devastated—crying, screaming, throwing her head onto the table. “I need more mosquitoes! There are no more mosquitoes!” We tried to give her pretend mosquitoes, but she was having none of it. She was out of mosquitoes. Two years old and she had already invented her own lack.
We all know this pattern. We imagine things we need and then we decide we do not have enough of them. Money. Romantic love. Success. Accomplishments. Whether we create the belief that these things are real and necessary or are simply falling into what society tells us we need, it’s us who created these desires. We have the power to believe that what we have is what we need. We imagined the problem, and we could un-imagine it.
Obviously, there are real problems in the world. There are people who truly do not have enough to eat. People who do not have what they need. People who have suffered real and significant loss.
But frankly, sometimes we are so caught up in our lack of imaginary mosquitoes, we don’t even see the real suffering that is happening on the outside.
It can be easy to see this behavior on the outside—watching other people-- we have something to compare to, we are unattached. We see the addiction, the destructive behavior, the bad decisions in the lives of friends and strangers just as easily as we see the better choice, the hope in the midst of despair. For other people sometimes, but rarely for ourselves.
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
My grandmother’s license plate says “Native Land”, but her people are not from Oklahoma. Not originally anyway. They walked to Oklahoma—to Tahlequah, where my grandparents live, where my sister was born. They walked there. From Georgia. When I hear the passage from Jeremiah I think of them: “the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company.” They just kept dying—carrying their dead until the next stopping point, hoping to give them a decent burial. The trail of tears. But that great company did not return to their native land. They were driven from it. They had to make a new home. My grandmother, who one Thanksgiving told me she hated the color of her own skin. My mother, who used curlers to disguise her straight, dark hair until the day she died.
Truly, an absence of a imaginary mosquitoes was the least of their problems.
As part of the backyard documentary film festival at the Restoration Project, we watched a movie called Traces of the Trade. The movie was made by a young woman from a prominent Episcopal family from the Northeast, who discovered that her family was also the largest slave trading family in US history. Together with her relatives, close and distant, she traveled the triangular trade route backwards- visiting the places from whence the slaves were taken, the places where the slaves were exchanged for goods, and back to her home town where the goods were manufactured into something to trade for more slaves.
What does it mean to be a descendent of this history? To be the child of those who walked from Georgia and those who lead them along the way? To have inherited the privilege of an economic system that even today treats human beings as objects and possessions?
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
What would we say if Jesus said to us, “What do you want me to do for you?”?
What do you want Jesus to do for you?
Do you believe that Jesus could heal us?
“When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.
Then were our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy; then was it said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them."
The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, shouldering their seed, shall come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”
I think I have told you before how much I love this psalm. The imagery is so rich and so real to me. I know what it is to water the seeds for the next season with my own tears. So do my ancestors. So do those my ancestors exploited for their own gain. So do the people I am part of exploiting today, so that I can have the cheapest product.
We all know this pattern. We all remember when we went out weeping, when we believed nothing would come from all the seeds we have planted. When we did not believe the Lord would do great things for us.
It is funny how quickly we forget what comes next.
The little sprouts of hope. The fruit of God’s hand. It is in all of us.
I imagine the original point of today’s gospel story was to show the great power that Jesus had- giving sight so easily to one who had none. But frankly, physical blindness seems like a pretty small problem in the face of all that those of us who have eyes to see are blind to.
Have you ever been in the pit of despair? Have you believed that there was no hope? That you were lost and always would be?
It always amazes me how people remain dignified, images of God even when all of society is trying to tell them they are less than human. The Cherokees carrying their ancestors to a proper burial, carrying their traditions, their language, their way with them all those many miles. The slaves who sang the stories of God’s salvation, who cared for one another as family. The same sex couples lined up at city hall to be married. The art created by children living in slums all over the world. The people of South Africa, dancing the toyi toyi in the face of guns, offering forgiveness and reconciliation to one another after the guns had been laid down.
Truly we are beautifully and wonderfully made.
“Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheave.”
This is how our God works. And it is hard to believe that when you’re in the midst of the weeping, when you look at the tremendous history of injustice we have to overcome. But God is amazing, and God working in us- well there is just nothing else like it.
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dreamed.
Then were our mouths filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy.
Can’t you taste it? The laughter in your mouth? The joy on your tongue? I feel like I was there. And maybe I was. Just a little while ago. But I have already forgotten a lot of it. Sitting here without invisible mosquitoes.
Which is why we have each other. I don’t know how, but eventually Carol was able to nonchalantly pull some invisible mosquitoes out of her pocket, and our young friend was once again contented. Together, we found the thing she needed. Together we can begin to talk about racism and injustice. Together we can find hope in the midst of despair. What you lack, I might have. What you have forgotten, I might remember. What you are blind to, I might see. This is the blessing of community.
What would you say to Jesus if he asked you what you want him to do for you?
Whatever it is, it’s worth asking. Because our healing may begin with a simple question.
One of the members of our community is two. In between her many dress changes and art projects, she is a great spiritual teacher. At a recent Sabbath meal, she decided to pretend to be a lizard, like the one we saw on the window. Someone told her that lizards ate mosquitoes, so she dutifully began eating imaginary mosquitoes. But then something happened, if only in her mind, and she ran out of imaginary mosquitoes. She became instantly devastated—crying, screaming, throwing her head onto the table. “I need more mosquitoes! There are no more mosquitoes!” We tried to give her pretend mosquitoes, but she was having none of it. She was out of mosquitoes. Two years old and she had already invented her own lack.
We all know this pattern. We imagine things we need and then we decide we do not have enough of them. Money. Romantic love. Success. Accomplishments. Whether we create the belief that these things are real and necessary or are simply falling into what society tells us we need, it’s us who created these desires. We have the power to believe that what we have is what we need. We imagined the problem, and we could un-imagine it.
Obviously, there are real problems in the world. There are people who truly do not have enough to eat. People who do not have what they need. People who have suffered real and significant loss.
But frankly, sometimes we are so caught up in our lack of imaginary mosquitoes, we don’t even see the real suffering that is happening on the outside.
It can be easy to see this behavior on the outside—watching other people-- we have something to compare to, we are unattached. We see the addiction, the destructive behavior, the bad decisions in the lives of friends and strangers just as easily as we see the better choice, the hope in the midst of despair. For other people sometimes, but rarely for ourselves.
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
My grandmother’s license plate says “Native Land”, but her people are not from Oklahoma. Not originally anyway. They walked to Oklahoma—to Tahlequah, where my grandparents live, where my sister was born. They walked there. From Georgia. When I hear the passage from Jeremiah I think of them: “the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company.” They just kept dying—carrying their dead until the next stopping point, hoping to give them a decent burial. The trail of tears. But that great company did not return to their native land. They were driven from it. They had to make a new home. My grandmother, who one Thanksgiving told me she hated the color of her own skin. My mother, who used curlers to disguise her straight, dark hair until the day she died.
Truly, an absence of a imaginary mosquitoes was the least of their problems.
As part of the backyard documentary film festival at the Restoration Project, we watched a movie called Traces of the Trade. The movie was made by a young woman from a prominent Episcopal family from the Northeast, who discovered that her family was also the largest slave trading family in US history. Together with her relatives, close and distant, she traveled the triangular trade route backwards- visiting the places from whence the slaves were taken, the places where the slaves were exchanged for goods, and back to her home town where the goods were manufactured into something to trade for more slaves.
What does it mean to be a descendent of this history? To be the child of those who walked from Georgia and those who lead them along the way? To have inherited the privilege of an economic system that even today treats human beings as objects and possessions?
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
What would we say if Jesus said to us, “What do you want me to do for you?”?
What do you want Jesus to do for you?
Do you believe that Jesus could heal us?
“When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.
Then were our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy; then was it said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them."
The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, shouldering their seed, shall come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”
I think I have told you before how much I love this psalm. The imagery is so rich and so real to me. I know what it is to water the seeds for the next season with my own tears. So do my ancestors. So do those my ancestors exploited for their own gain. So do the people I am part of exploiting today, so that I can have the cheapest product.
We all know this pattern. We all remember when we went out weeping, when we believed nothing would come from all the seeds we have planted. When we did not believe the Lord would do great things for us.
It is funny how quickly we forget what comes next.
The little sprouts of hope. The fruit of God’s hand. It is in all of us.
I imagine the original point of today’s gospel story was to show the great power that Jesus had- giving sight so easily to one who had none. But frankly, physical blindness seems like a pretty small problem in the face of all that those of us who have eyes to see are blind to.
Have you ever been in the pit of despair? Have you believed that there was no hope? That you were lost and always would be?
It always amazes me how people remain dignified, images of God even when all of society is trying to tell them they are less than human. The Cherokees carrying their ancestors to a proper burial, carrying their traditions, their language, their way with them all those many miles. The slaves who sang the stories of God’s salvation, who cared for one another as family. The same sex couples lined up at city hall to be married. The art created by children living in slums all over the world. The people of South Africa, dancing the toyi toyi in the face of guns, offering forgiveness and reconciliation to one another after the guns had been laid down.
Truly we are beautifully and wonderfully made.
“Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheave.”
This is how our God works. And it is hard to believe that when you’re in the midst of the weeping, when you look at the tremendous history of injustice we have to overcome. But God is amazing, and God working in us- well there is just nothing else like it.
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dreamed.
Then were our mouths filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy.
Can’t you taste it? The laughter in your mouth? The joy on your tongue? I feel like I was there. And maybe I was. Just a little while ago. But I have already forgotten a lot of it. Sitting here without invisible mosquitoes.
Which is why we have each other. I don’t know how, but eventually Carol was able to nonchalantly pull some invisible mosquitoes out of her pocket, and our young friend was once again contented. Together, we found the thing she needed. Together we can begin to talk about racism and injustice. Together we can find hope in the midst of despair. What you lack, I might have. What you have forgotten, I might remember. What you are blind to, I might see. This is the blessing of community.
What would you say to Jesus if he asked you what you want him to do for you?
Whatever it is, it’s worth asking. Because our healing may begin with a simple question.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Our gifts
It wasn’t that long ago that I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. Weeks before my ordination I told a mentor priest that I didn’t think I was ready to be ordained nor did I feel like was worthy to be ordained. I told him I was contemplating telling the Bishop maybe we should just forget this, at least for the time being until I was better prepared. My mentor told me I would never “be ready” to be priest and no one is worthy, but we are called and when we are called we must respond. “So,” he said, “shut up on let’s get on with it.” A few months after my ordination I was talking to the Bishop about what might lie in the future for me. He told me I would spend the rest of my life being formed into a priest. Never ready and always being formed, those are the best pieces of advise I can carry forward to others considering their own calling.
What gets lost in the Episcopal Church is our Anglican theology of the priesthood of all believers. We are all called to be priests – we all have our own calling. And it begins with our baptism. Let’s turn to page 293 of the Book of Common Prayer and re-visit our calling as priests of the baptized. What is very interesting is, if we compare the ordination examination of a priest on page 532 of the BCP with the five questions of the Renewal of Baptismal Vows, we will find that there isn’t much difference between the “priestly ordination” of the baptized and the priest of Holy Orders.
The laity is called into the priesthood of all believers beginning at baptism. Ordained and lay alike are called into the role of being leaders in the Holy Kingdom of God. Chapter five of the book of Hebrews outlines a call to holy leadership – modeling Jesus Christ our high priest.
Earthly priests and leaders of the Church should be sought out, “called by God,” the writer of Hebrews tells us. The Very Rev. Rebecca McClain says that you are “tapped on the shoulder by God and by those who see the calling.” That’s why I love our practice of selecting our Bishop’s Committee. After prayerful consideration, people are asked if they would consider putting their names in the “hat.” Then as a community we pray over these names and ask the Holy Spirit to do the selecting. After the prayers we draw the names out of the hat. And our Senior and Junior Warden and Treasurer are each sought out for their gifts. In other words, each of these leaders has been tapped on the shoulder.
Jesus modeled for us the kinds of leaders that we pray can lead us. These leaders can be characterized with one word, “humility.”
Jesus’ humility begins with his calling. Jesus, being a descendant of David and the tribe of Judah was not eligible to be priest, yet, he was called out by God to be a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Once again, the homilist of Hebrews draws upon two scriptures, Genesis 14:18-20 and Psalms 110:4, to make his point.
Melchizedek was a pre-Aaronic and pre-Levitical priest-king to whom Abraham paid tithes. (This is one of the scriptural references through which we understand our responsibility of giving a tithe.) Even though Jesus was ineligible to be a priest according to human design, he was called by God to serve as the great high priest, the heavenly priest for us all. And, even though we feel we are not eligible or worthy to the calling of the priesthood of all believers, by virtue of our baptism in the name of Jesus, we too are indeed called.
In Hebrews 5:7-9 we read that Jesus modeled the ultimate humility as a leader. His death on the cross is known theologically as “atonement.” Abelard, a 12th Century theologian poised that one way of understanding Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross demonstrated his complete self-giving love and that his self-emptying should inspire us in our moral lives to do likewise (John Burgess, Feasting on the Word). Karl Barth, one of the greatest Protestant theologians of the 20th Century writes that Jesus, as the Son of God, subordination to the Father is the metal of Jesus’ faith and that Jesus’ faith is the obedience of humility.
How do we live out the faith that calls us into the obedience of humility? Continuing to read Hebrews 5:7-9, we model Jesus. In prayers for others to God, in our submission to God, in our learning, and in our spiritual formation, we like Jesus, are modeled into humble leaders.
God calls all of us, through our baptism in the name of Jesus, to be humble leaders. Our humble leadership takes many forms. Some are called to prayer, some are called to serve at the altar, some are called to serve with music, some are called to teach the children, some are called to teach adult Bible study, some are called to be on the Altar Guild, some are called to serve on the Bishop’s Committee, some are called be ushers, some are called to cook and serve for IHELP. We are all called to love our neighbors as ourselves and we are all called to love God.
In of humble leadership we are also called to give our tithes to the high priest, Jesus Christ, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Abraham paid his tithes to Melchizedek, we pay our tithes to God, the Trinity. When you give money to St. Augustine’s you are not giving money to the church, you are giving money to God. That’s why our Sunday offering is placed on the altar and is blessed, not by the priest, but by the Holy Spirit whom the people have asked to make our gifts and the bread and wine holy for service and nourishment.
This act of blessing our gifts raises the stakes of responsibility for the Bishop’s Committee, who is responsible for its distribution. St. Augustine’s should use the money given to God in only these ways. 1) To worship God through our prayers and praise. 2) To spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 3) To care for the poor. 4) To visit the sick and those in prison. 5) To work for social justice, which includes the alien in our land. In other words, we give our tithes in order to worship God and to serve the community, to bring people in to worship and to send them out to serve.
Together, in our different means of giving, we participate in each of these ministries of humble leadership. You will be receiving a pledge card within the next few weeks. Prayerfully consider how God is calling you to participate. Then on November 1st, All Saints Day, we will gather all the cards and pray over them, offering thanksgivings and blessings and seeking God’s blessing of our ministry. All God is asking is that you take your part in living out your calling as a priest in the Kingdom of God.
What gets lost in the Episcopal Church is our Anglican theology of the priesthood of all believers. We are all called to be priests – we all have our own calling. And it begins with our baptism. Let’s turn to page 293 of the Book of Common Prayer and re-visit our calling as priests of the baptized. What is very interesting is, if we compare the ordination examination of a priest on page 532 of the BCP with the five questions of the Renewal of Baptismal Vows, we will find that there isn’t much difference between the “priestly ordination” of the baptized and the priest of Holy Orders.
The laity is called into the priesthood of all believers beginning at baptism. Ordained and lay alike are called into the role of being leaders in the Holy Kingdom of God. Chapter five of the book of Hebrews outlines a call to holy leadership – modeling Jesus Christ our high priest.
Earthly priests and leaders of the Church should be sought out, “called by God,” the writer of Hebrews tells us. The Very Rev. Rebecca McClain says that you are “tapped on the shoulder by God and by those who see the calling.” That’s why I love our practice of selecting our Bishop’s Committee. After prayerful consideration, people are asked if they would consider putting their names in the “hat.” Then as a community we pray over these names and ask the Holy Spirit to do the selecting. After the prayers we draw the names out of the hat. And our Senior and Junior Warden and Treasurer are each sought out for their gifts. In other words, each of these leaders has been tapped on the shoulder.
Jesus modeled for us the kinds of leaders that we pray can lead us. These leaders can be characterized with one word, “humility.”
Jesus’ humility begins with his calling. Jesus, being a descendant of David and the tribe of Judah was not eligible to be priest, yet, he was called out by God to be a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Once again, the homilist of Hebrews draws upon two scriptures, Genesis 14:18-20 and Psalms 110:4, to make his point.
Melchizedek was a pre-Aaronic and pre-Levitical priest-king to whom Abraham paid tithes. (This is one of the scriptural references through which we understand our responsibility of giving a tithe.) Even though Jesus was ineligible to be a priest according to human design, he was called by God to serve as the great high priest, the heavenly priest for us all. And, even though we feel we are not eligible or worthy to the calling of the priesthood of all believers, by virtue of our baptism in the name of Jesus, we too are indeed called.
In Hebrews 5:7-9 we read that Jesus modeled the ultimate humility as a leader. His death on the cross is known theologically as “atonement.” Abelard, a 12th Century theologian poised that one way of understanding Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross demonstrated his complete self-giving love and that his self-emptying should inspire us in our moral lives to do likewise (John Burgess, Feasting on the Word). Karl Barth, one of the greatest Protestant theologians of the 20th Century writes that Jesus, as the Son of God, subordination to the Father is the metal of Jesus’ faith and that Jesus’ faith is the obedience of humility.
How do we live out the faith that calls us into the obedience of humility? Continuing to read Hebrews 5:7-9, we model Jesus. In prayers for others to God, in our submission to God, in our learning, and in our spiritual formation, we like Jesus, are modeled into humble leaders.
God calls all of us, through our baptism in the name of Jesus, to be humble leaders. Our humble leadership takes many forms. Some are called to prayer, some are called to serve at the altar, some are called to serve with music, some are called to teach the children, some are called to teach adult Bible study, some are called to be on the Altar Guild, some are called to serve on the Bishop’s Committee, some are called be ushers, some are called to cook and serve for IHELP. We are all called to love our neighbors as ourselves and we are all called to love God.
In of humble leadership we are also called to give our tithes to the high priest, Jesus Christ, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Abraham paid his tithes to Melchizedek, we pay our tithes to God, the Trinity. When you give money to St. Augustine’s you are not giving money to the church, you are giving money to God. That’s why our Sunday offering is placed on the altar and is blessed, not by the priest, but by the Holy Spirit whom the people have asked to make our gifts and the bread and wine holy for service and nourishment.
This act of blessing our gifts raises the stakes of responsibility for the Bishop’s Committee, who is responsible for its distribution. St. Augustine’s should use the money given to God in only these ways. 1) To worship God through our prayers and praise. 2) To spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 3) To care for the poor. 4) To visit the sick and those in prison. 5) To work for social justice, which includes the alien in our land. In other words, we give our tithes in order to worship God and to serve the community, to bring people in to worship and to send them out to serve.
Together, in our different means of giving, we participate in each of these ministries of humble leadership. You will be receiving a pledge card within the next few weeks. Prayerfully consider how God is calling you to participate. Then on November 1st, All Saints Day, we will gather all the cards and pray over them, offering thanksgivings and blessings and seeking God’s blessing of our ministry. All God is asking is that you take your part in living out your calling as a priest in the Kingdom of God.
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